Try to avoid Stun Blasts, as they may leave you disorientated.

This weekend, I was at home. At home, I have all my stuff. Therefore, this weekend was a massive excuse to play video games in quite unhealthy doses. However, this didn't quite work out to be the case, as it took me two days to eventually start playing one of the THREE games I have yet to play since getting them around my birthday in October. The reason for this: I felt bad starting them without my girlfriend around.

In the past, when I've had a much freer access to my PS3 or whenever I've been desperate enough to use Katie's brothers' XBox, times would come about where I would play a game whilst Katie watched; apparently enjoying herself in doing so (though I have my doubts). This happened often, to the extent where she has bought me games in order to facilitate this habit. And it's really nice. There is no better feeling that swooping around Arkham Asylum whilst leaning against a comfy girlfriend. So much so, however, that when I get to situations where I have a new game and it isn't a sports sim (which is obviously where she draws the line) I wait until she is around to play it.

And so, the conundrum of the previous weekend, where I went home on the Thursday evening with Katie coming down a day later. What to do in the intervening time? Simple: I have the aforementioned three games to get going on and a whole day to kill doing it. Just like I had wanted. Except when I went to pick a game to play, I was troubled. Discounting Fallout 3 as it would have been too much to take on over 3 days, I had to decide between Enslaved and Assassin's Creed 2. Seeing as Enslaved is based on Monkey: Journey to the West and has Andy Serkis as the main character there was seemingly no contest. But this would mean starting without Katie. This was unthinkable. She'd miss the story. I couldn't do that to Katie. Which pretty much sums up how dependant I am of her, soppy fool that I am. And so, the game I had waited ages to play had to wait a bit longer for Katie. And instead I played FIFA with my old housemate, Chris. And even won a few times for once.

And then, do you know what I played Friday morning? Sim City 4. I honest-to-God cannot explain why, but I did. I scrabbled around for the disc, waited for the usual Maxis load up screens to finish trying to be funny and attacked my allotted square of land for which to try, for once, to build a tangible and thriving community upon.

Except I couldn't. That goal still eludes me. Once more the evil mistress that is Sim City laughed in my face as I constantly ran out of funds without getting one poxy skyscraper. I quite royally failed at Sim City. But I know I am not alone. The world is full of wannabee cityscapers who have had their dreams crushed in Maxis' Iron Fist of Unforgiving Torment. The thing is, that game is so insanely hard to keep balanced whilst still progressing (at least, it is for the impatient). I could just about sustain a small farming community, but the moment I pushed for the swankier gubbins that I have heard the game contains I fell flat; mocked by the red numericals that soon denoted my available moolah, hoping for a business deal to keep my income a bit closer to my outgoings. I know; that is such a boring trouble to have in a game.

But I think, maybe, that that is the point of the game. It is in fact a governmental tool to create sympathy for their efforts so they get less of a negative reaction when the do something unfavourable. If health funding is suddenly lowered than, rather than take to the streets demanding this be reversed, you sit back calmly, remarking how you know exactly what they must be going through after your troubles keeping Funkytown, USA afloat after you had to build all those Fire Stations after it expanded. If people were actually able to beat the game and build the next New York on their laptops, people would start to believe they could run things better. And that's how revolutions start. And so there is this impossible game; thwarting all who attempt it so that Democracy can be maintained. T'is the only logical explanation.

Incidentally, I did eventually start on Enslaved and it was great! By no means the perfect game but fun to play and a really novel retelling of Journey to the West. Sadly, I have no idea how long it will be till I can get back to it. This is very sad.

Click three times and say this...

As I struggle through the gates onto Platform 14 at London Liverpool Street, burdened with luggage and the now essential cup of Coffee that has wormed its way into my regular routine over the years, I take a look at the train waiting in front of me. Its face and sides generously adorned with spray-paint iconography. Illegible to the peaceful people I wish to call my own; to me it is clear as newsprint. The garish and violent conjurations bedecked before me are a message, in what I now realise is my native tongue: “Welcome to Essex. Here there be monsters.”

Though graffiti may have spread worldwide and is found commonly in most every city in the world, it is never as broadly open and confrontational as it is to the lands east of the M25. In the Fenlands I now call home, you may find tagging on park benches or etched into windows; a small symbol of youthful rebellion in an otherwise fairly, ‘old-English’ neck of the woods. Where the letter-boxes stand like proud Oaks despite the ever growing chainsaws of UPS. But in Essex, the graffiti serves as war-paint. Just like their geographical Iceni ancestors, the graffiti is an outward show of presence. It is everywhere, on every flat service. Trains run like literal telegraph lines carrying messages from Shoeburyness to Stratford.* Though it is reported that the average Briton is caught on camera at least 70 times in one day, the average Essexite is probably in view of that many items of graffiti at any moment.

I have been in the city of gleaming spires for too long now... wait, that’s Oxford isn’t it? Um. Hang on...

I have been in the quasi-city of clear disjointedness for too long now and am unable to properly acclimatise myself to lands that were once always around me. Though it is dark outside the train I know what is out there: fields, factories and failed tourism spots. But for someone who now lives in a fairly well maintained and vibrant student city, the realisation of the trouble out of the window now is hard to fathom. Drawing nearer to the coast brings a freshness of sea air heavily dulled with the twinge of decay from once vibrant but now vagrant businesses that have never kept up with the change in mentality after the decline of the Victorian era. What remains now are disused buildings; pale and wan. The idea of bright colour still clings to the weakened walls but it is lost like the custom it once saw. Everything is now geared towards London. Essex today is simply the residential extension of The City, with the only modern buildings being Supermarkets and shopping centres like Lakeside. The joys that once were and the joys that could be are overlooked in favour of the Commute. And thus the graffiti grows.

The people here are tough. The train contains a pretty extensive cross-section of the county’s inhabitants. Either short-haired and in suits, staring at laptops or brooding and shell-suited, hiding their eyes with shadowy peaks. Quiet and sullen, keeping themselves to themselves as they come to the end of another day. Eccentricities are rare here. Tweed stops at Audley End and only starts again once you hit Canterbury. And whilst there is certainly a creative streak, it highlights the harshness of reality, the tribulations of life. This is where the Emos and the Grime-Hop artists ferment their grief-stricken renditions. Essexites are strugglers, but perseverers. They battle on; ironic, gallows-humour to break up the daily grind any way they can. These are scholars of a different sort; alumni of Hard Knocks. And they come out the better for it. Certainly better than I have with my Anglia Ruskin degree.

Home again, then. To the place that time seems to have forgot; the land underneath the apparent “reality” of the TV series. Half happy for the familiarity and half despairing at it’s sad decline. We file off the train with nary a word spoken and head towards our respective rides. Stepping into the waiting car, I let out a mild sigh, knowing that, in truth, it’s good to be back. 

*Although not on the same line or rail company. You would need to get off at West Ham and get the Jubilee line to Stratford from there.

News News News!

Charlie Sheen Rockets Into Space

The actor, Charlie Sheen, has managed to achieve the vastly unlikely feat of taking the world by surprise. After another in a chain of recent "tell-all" interviews; the Two and a Half Men star proceeded to get so carried away with his own insanity that it literally launched him into the sky, leaving an onlooking news anchor speechless as she watched Sheen rise into the air.

Onlookers around the Los Angeles Zoo's meerkat enclosure; where the crazed film star had taken residence in the days leading up to his fateful interview, observed Sheen (rendered ageless by his being too "winning" for the passing of time) launch into a wild and frantic rant regarding his "pure epicness" being so strong it was visually corroding the clothes he was wearing, before screaming "I am the Meerkat King!"  shuddering dramatically as he rose into the sky at a breathtaking speed.

Speculation has mounted in the hours since Sheen's departure about how this could have happened, what risk there is to other celebrities on the wild side of Hollywood and whether or not the Hot Shots actor escaped the Earth's atmosphere. So far, there have been no sightings of Sheen in orbit, but reports are coming in from NASA that the International Space Station has been placed under alert to receive the hot-headed, party-loving famous person. In the mean time, scientists have been hypothesising as to the probable cause of the A-lister's propulsion from the ground.

Dr. Habengleiber, from the LA Institute of Advanced Improbabilitics, issued a statement, saying that, "in all likelihood, Sheen's unlikely lift-off may stem from his unique physical make-up. The few experiments we have been able to run on the combination of feline blood and cocaine suggest that even a one gram rock of crack can create a highly volatile reaction when mixed with the blood from the average stray tom-cat. Given Sheen's recent drug habits, it is therefore no surprise that Sheen has been transported from the planet's surface in this way."

The event has even triggered the change in focus of several of California's most eminent astrologers, shifting the gaze of their telescopes from distant potential solar systems to the area directly above the West Coast in the hopes of tracking down some sign of the drug-addled maniac, although such efforts could well be in vain, if local Scientologists are to be believed. Tom Cruise himself proclaimed Sheen to have in fact "ascended" to join the vast ether of the cosmos after the sheer power of his soul burst from his body. Needless to say, there is a close watch being kept on the diminutive actor in case he should follow suit.

Whatever the outcome, this event adds further weight to the worrying claims made by Sheen himself that he is the most potent narcotic. Anyone who may have come into contact with Sheen recently are being urged to report to their local Doctor for tests in order to determine that they are completely safe from his influence.

And what next for Sheen, should he ever return? Although the producers of Two and a Half Men have so far declined to comment, we can be sure that Sheen will not stay hidden away for very long.

Dana Twoolie reporting.